"LONG LONG TRAIL"

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 3 January 1927, Page 8

"LONG LONG TRAIL"

HISTORY OF THE SONG

POPULARISED BY CANADIANS.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

VANCOUVER, Ist December

The story of the origin of-that most popular of war-time songs, "The Long, Long Trail," has been 1 revealed for the first time. The words were written by Stoddard King, and the music by Zo Elliott, when they were undergraduates at^Tale in 1913, and it had been in print seven months before war broke out." ...-•■■' ; Writing'of the song,.Mr. Elliott says it first attracted notice among the Canadians, who were in ; camp in Enc- | land. They, knew both the trail and. the "lonjfc night of waiting," which had just set in, when it became known that the war was a matter of years, rather than months, as was first be: lieved. A boat-load of, Canadians sang it going down the Thames; "wherever they -went, in restaurant, barracks, or on leave, they sang it. Then London took it up. '' v "As a friend told me, next to the noise of London traffic, the sound of "The Long, Long Trail" predominated. One could not eseapo it. Men of far countries brought a new idea into an old world in the shape of. a song." SONG OF MUD AND BLOOD. "Next to the sound of guns, you hoar tho song,'' another friend wrote the author from the field. "The Long, Long Trail" seemed the least exhaustible of all vocal ammunition. It became the song of mud and blood. John Masefield wrote me that never "had. he seen so many pass to dio singing the same tune, always, always, thousands upon thousands, going up to die in the mud. Coningsby Dawson, in his war letters, 'Carry On,' wrote: 'Wo sing it as a sort of prayer as we stand almost waist deep in the mud." The New Zealanders and Australians iivr-'r heard it just after tho ovacuation of Gallipoli, which took place the week before Christmas, 1915. The date of the first presentation of tho "Long; Long Trail" would probably be about February, 1916, -A Welsh regimental choir, comprising 80 voices—well trained, natural singers—-was encored a dozen times for their singing of it in tho Sultanieh Opera House, Cairo. Next day every soldier practised it till he could at least whistle the refrain correctly. A manuscript copy of the song has been given a place among the relics of the Great War in the' Museum dcs Invalidesj Paris. It has thus, -as Mr. Elliott says, "reached the last high altar of its endeavour." It is fitting, he adds, that the original of tho song, should "ultimately crumble in the land where those who sang it and loved it fell with tho tuno fresh ■ in their hearts."